Useful charlatans: Giovanni Succi and Stefano Merlatti’s fasting contest in Paris, 1886 (2020)
This paper analyzes the public fasts of two Italian “hunger artists,” Giovanni Succi and Stefano Merlatti, in Paris in 1886, and their ability to forego eating for a long period (thirty and fifty days respectively). Some contemporary witnesses described them as clever frauds, but others considered them to be interesting physiological anomalies. Controversies about their fasts entered academic circles, but they also spread throughout the urban public at different levels. First, Succi and Merlatti steered medical debates among physicians on the “scientific” explanations of the limits of human resistance to inanition, and acted as ideal mediators for doctors’ professional interests. Second, they became useful tools for science popularizers in their attempt to gain authority in drawing the boundaries between “orthodox” and “heterodox” knowledge. Finally, in the 1880s, Succi and Merlatti’s contest, the controversy around the liquids they ingested, and their scientific supervision by medical doctors, all reinforced their own professional status as itinerant fasters in a golden decade for that kind of endeavor. For all those reasons, Succi and Merlatti can be viewed as useful, epistemologically-active charlatans.
...MoreArticle Irina Podgorny; Daniel Gethmann (2020) 'Please, come in.' Being a charlatan, or the question of trustworthy knowledge. Science in Context (pp. 355-361).
Similar Citations
Article
Nieto-Galan, Agustí;
(2015)
Mr. Giovanni Succi Meets Dr. Luigi Luciani in Florence: Hunger Artists and Experimental Physiology in the Late Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001551011/)
Book
Sheila Zurbrigg;
(2018)
Epidemic Malaria and Hunger in Colonial Punjab: Weakened by Want
(/isis/citation/CBB453593524/)
Book
Tom Scott-Smith;
(2020)
On an Empty Stomach: Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief
(/isis/citation/CBB138751996/)
Book
Foxcroft, Louise;
(2012)
Calories and Corsets: A History of Dieting over 2000 Years
(/isis/citation/CBB001200874/)
Article
Stolberg, Michael;
(2012)
“Abhorreas Pinguedinem”: Fat and Obesity in Early Modern Medicine (c. 1500--1750)
(/isis/citation/CBB001221620/)
Article
de Ceglia, Francesco Paolo;
Pogliano, Claudio;
(2011)
Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB001024822/)
Article
Chast, François;
Slama, Gérard;
(2007)
Apollinaire Bouchardat et le diabète
(/isis/citation/CBB000931845/)
Book
Stewart, Mary Lynn;
(2001)
For Health and Beauty: Physical Culture for Frenchwomen, 1880s-1930s
(/isis/citation/CBB000320372/)
Thesis
David, Alison Victoria Matthews;
(2002)
Cutting a Figure: Tailoring, Technology and Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris
(/isis/citation/CBB001562201/)
Book
David Gentilcore;
Matthew Smith;
(2018)
Proteins, Pathologies and Politics: Dietary Innovation and Disease from the Nineteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB880825514/)
Article
Nolte, Karen;
(2011)
Schwindsucht---Krankheit, Gesundheit und Moral im frühen 19. Jahrhundert
(/isis/citation/CBB001420795/)
Article
Kari Tove Elvbakken;
(2020)
Physiology and Hygiene in the History of Nutrition Science: The Norwegian Case 1870–1970
(/isis/citation/CBB156857577/)
Book
Biltekoff, Charlotte;
(2013)
Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Food and Health
(/isis/citation/CBB001452069/)
Chapter
Lara Karpenko;
(2017)
“So Extraordinary a Bond”: Mesmerism and Sympathetic Identification in Charles Adams’s Notting Hill Mystery
(/isis/citation/CBB341567788/)
Thesis
Simmons, Dana Jean;
(2004)
Minimal Frenchmen: Science and Standards of Living, 1840--1960
(/isis/citation/CBB001560916/)
Book
Tinne Claes;
(2019)
Corpses in Belgian Anatomy, 1860–1914: Nobody’s Dead
(/isis/citation/CBB827295266/)
Book
Josh Doty;
(2020)
The Perfecting of Nature: Reforming Bodies in Antebellum Literature
(/isis/citation/CBB390733948/)
Book
Marland, Hilary;
(2013)
Health and Girlhood in Britain, 1874--1920
(/isis/citation/CBB001422200/)
Article
Roldán, Diego P;
(2010)
Discursos alrededor del cuerpo, la máquina, la energía y la fatiga: hibridaciones culturales en la Argentina fin-de-siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB001420466/)
Article
Diederik F Janssen;
(2020)
From Libidines nefandæ to sexual perversions
(/isis/citation/CBB841736918/)
Be the first to comment!